I remember being in a tent at Electric Picnic perhaps 3 years ago when Christy Moore belted out the Pogues ‘Thousands are Sailing’ to 15,000 very emotional people. For sure there were other sources but a good part of the emotion was the sense that it was all happening again.
I remember being in a tent at Electric Picnic perhaps 3 years ago when Christy Moore belted out the Pogues ‘Thousands are Sailing’ to 15,000 very emotional people. For sure there were other sources but a good part of the emotion was the sense that it was all happening again.
That song about emigration at the time of the famine and then again in the 1980s ends
Where e’er we go, we celebrate
The land that makes us refugees
From fear of priests with empty plates
From guilt and weeping effigies
And we dance
If the hashtag #hometovote on Twitter is anything to go by thousands are indeed sailing tonight, there are big ques at passport control and photo after photo of people returning home to vote for equality.
Earlier tonight ( 19 May ) on O’Connell st I witnessed a group of four old men with huge God Says No placards screaming at people walking past the GPO. I marvelled at that sight, what on earth did they imagine they were doing. Did they really think this display of macho homophobic outrage was going to win a single extra No.
Everywhere you walk in Dublin people are wearing Yes badges. There will be much left to fight for on Sunday but there is reason to hope that the ‘fear of priests with empty plates’ that dominated the lives of so many of the older generations is already banished.
WORDS: Andrew Flood (Follow Andrew on Twitter )